FEATURES

Every part of running a childcare setting, in one place.

Register, billing, rota, parent comms, safeguarding, waiting list, compliance. The full operational stack of a UK childcare setting — not six sign-ins and a spreadsheet glue layer.

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01 Run the day02 Run the business03 Run the team04 Run the waiting list05 Run compliance06 Run smarter
01
RUN THE DAY

Sign-in, care logs, photos, zones, ratios — handled.

The screens staff actually live in. Designed for the chaos of pickup time, the precision of a safeguarding inspection, and the speed of a busy 8am drop-off all at once.

Digital register
Day or week view. Auto sign-out at session end. Auto-absent if a child doesn't arrive past your grace period. School-run mode bulk-signs an after-school club back in — and skips anyone whose session starts later.
Flexible session patterns
Run any shape of day — morning + afternoon for a nursery, or breakfast + after-school + a one-off babysitting booking for a club. Each session is signed in/out, charged, and absence-tracked on its OWN times, even two in the same afternoon.
Opening hours
Set your real opening days and times per setting. The register, schedule, rota, billing pro-rata and parent app all honour them — a closed day shows a banner, not a phantom absence.
Tablet kiosk
A locked-down sign-in screen for the door. PIN-based, or QR-scan from the parent app with a code that rotates every 30 seconds. Configurable early-sign-in window stops a child being signed in hours before their session.
Works at the door with no connection
When the wifi drops, sign-ins, sign-outs, absences, naps, sleep checks, medication doses and staff clock-ins are kept on the tablet — through a reload — with the time they happened, and sent the moment it returns. Switch on offline tablets and the register and staff clock-in open even after a restart with no connection, from a copy of the next 3, 7 or 14 days locked with your own offline code. Payments and other care logs need a connection.
Type it up from paper
A day run on paper goes into ParentLink in one go: every booked session is a row — type the arrival and leaving times or tick Absent, and save once. Type your register or your staff list in from paper too, checked like a spreadsheet import before anything is saved.
Daily diary
Naps, meals, nappies, observations and photos, logged in one flow for each child and saved to the diary as you go. Lunch, a nappy round or nap time for the whole room in one go from the register, and one observation for a group of children.
Photo gallery
Multi-photo entries, per-photo captions. Auto-thumbnails, no storage cap on photos. Parents see the entry the moment you save it.
Video on the diary & journal — every plan
Short clips on diary entries and as learning-journal evidence, landing in the parent feed the moment you save. Every plan includes them — clip length and a monthly allowance per child depend on the plan (see Pricing). Stored privately in the UK like every photo; parents can download their own child's clips.
Learning journey + curriculum
Observations, next steps and progress tagged to your nation’s curriculum — EYFS, Curriculum for Excellence, Curriculum for Wales and Wales’s pathways for funded non-maintained nurseries, Northern Ireland’s pre-school guidance. For Scotland’s under-3s, ParentLink’s own observable indicators are organised by Realising the Ambition’s dimensions. Plan activities on the days they run, tick who took part, and it lands on each child’s journey.
Activity library
Save the activities that work, with a picture, the ages they suit and their learning areas; search and filter them, and share them across your group of settings. Plan them onto the days they run.
Zone tracking
Real-time map of which room each child is in. An alert on screen when a zone has more children than it holds. Auto-clears at day-end so tomorrow starts fresh.
Live ratios
Per-room and nursery-wide staff:child ratio chip. Turns red the moment you breach. Counts who's signed in, not who's on the rota.
Lunch + meal tracking
Per-day lunch list, allergy badges next to each name, kitchen-side print-out. Special-diet escalation built in.
Menu planner + allergen check
Plan the week's meals with allergen tags on every dish, live cross-checked against each child's tagged allergies — structured tags on both sides, never fragile free-text matching. Any child with an allergy note but no tags is named at the top, so a green tick can never hide an unchecked child.
Incidents + medication
Record an incident (bumped head, allergic reaction) with parent sign-off in one flow. Track every dose of medication administered.
Trips + outings
Scheduled (recurring) or one-off trips. Pull the child + staff list, check ratio, get parent consents. Stays visible in zones for the duration.
02
RUN THE BUSINESS

Invoicing, funded hours, TFC, Direct Debit, card payments.

The bit most childcare software gets wrong. ParentLink handles funded-hours rules for all four UK nations out of the box, reconciles Tax-Free Childcare payments from your bank statement, and processes DD + cards without taking a cut. And families can open any bill and see how it was worked out.

Invoice generatorPro
One invoice per family — monthly, every 4 weeks or weekly — built from attendance + funded hours + extras, with a statement of account any time. Print, PDF, email, or batch-send via the parent app. Re-runnable for corrections.
Explain my billPro
Families press Explain on any bill and see how it was worked out: the sessions and their prices, funded hours taken off, lunches, extras, the sibling discount, the days not charged and why, what’s been paid and what’s left to pay — and what changed since the bill before. Staff open the same window in Finance, so a question about a bill has one answer.
Direct Debit via GoCardlessPro
Per-nursery API key. Mandate setup, payment requests and failure reconciliation — a failed payment is flagged on Needs you and you collect it again when you’re ready. Webhook-verified callbacks.
Card payments via StripePro
Parents pay an invoice — extras included — or an online booking by card, and parents who can't do DD pay this way. Hosted Checkout flow. Same webhook-verified reconciliation.
Tax-Free Childcare reconciliationPro
Upload your bank statement; ParentLink matches TFC receipts to the right child by reference code. Per-bank parser. Idempotent on re-upload.
Funded hours tracking (4 nations)
England (EYFS): 30h for working parents from 9 months, starting the term after and moving to 3–4 year funding by itself; 15h universal for 3–4s; 15h for eligible 2-year-olds. The termly claim splits hours by age band. Scotland: 1,140h universal for 3–4yo + eligible 2yo. Wales: funded early education (nursery) and the Childcare Offer. Northern Ireland: 12.5h EA preschool. Per-child entitlement tracked per term with regulator-aligned periods, per-child YTD usage visible at a glance. Needs you flags renewals before they expire.
Statements + accounts exportPro
Per-parent statements one click away. CSVs format-locked for Xero, Sage, and QuickBooks — no “manual cleanup” step before import. Families print their own Yearly statement from the parent app: what they were charged and paid over the tax year, or between any two dates.
Billing in advance or in arrearsPro
Bill ahead and collect on the 1st, or bill for what happened. In advance, missed sessions, closures and days after leaving come off the next bill and what Direct Debit takes, a price rise counts only from its date, and a credit with nothing left to come off shows as a refund due.
Extra charges, credit and who paysPro
Snacks, nappies, suncream or a toy fund, each its own line on the bill, with let-offs and a reason. Choose which parent pays a child’s fees — theirs is the Direct Debit collected. Money paid over is kept as credit and comes off the next bill by itself.
Waivers + pro-rata
Mid-month start? Bank holiday? Sick week? Pro-rated charges and per-parent waivers visible on the printed invoice and the statement.
Finance overviewPro
Outstanding debt, this month's revenue, payment-method mix, top arrears — all on one screen. Drill-through to individual accounts.
03
RUN THE TEAM

Rota, leave, hours, payroll — all aligned.

A staff system that actually talks to the rest of the nursery. Lateness shows on the rota AND the lateness report AND the ratio chip — without any double-entry.

Visual rota builder
Week, month, or pattern view. Copy a staff member's schedule, apply a default pattern, override a single day. ANY-day patterns for flexible workers.
Kiosk staff sign-in
Staff sign themselves in at the same kiosk parents use. Manager override for forgotten sign-ins. Auto-cleanup at day-end.
My work for staff
Each staff member has their own rota page — week + month view, plus an .ics calendar export so shifts appear in their phone calendar.
Calendar subscription feeds
Subscribe to a live rota or nursery-events feed (ICS) from Outlook, Google, or Apple Calendar — shifts and events update automatically, no manual re-import each week.
Leave requests + approvals
Holiday, training, sick, maternity, emergency, and time off in lieu. Staff request from My work; managers approve from Needs you. Auto-blocks rota slots once approved.
Hours, timesheets + payroll CSV
Actual hours worked vs rota-ed hours, less unpaid breaks. Printable weekly timesheets a manager signs off, and a payroll CSV with lateness and missed sign-outs broken out.
Time off in lieu
Bank overtime as time owed instead of paying it. Days worked beyond the rota are proposed for approval, never banked automatically, and every entry is a ledger line with a reason and a name — staff can see their own balance.
Ratio compliance report
Per-day, per-room ratio % — flags any minute the nursery slipped below the required ratio. Uses each nation’s ratio template, and you can set your own in Settings → Ratios. Regulator-friendly across all four UK nations.
Key person assignments
Multi-select key-person pills per staff member, with a cap on how many children each one holds.
Roles and permissionsPro
Set each page and tab to Off, See only or See and change, role by role — start from a preset such as Room leader, or the read-only Auditor for inspectors, accountants and trustees, who is never a paid seat. Nothing changes until you press Save, which lists every change and who it affects. Account owners always keep Roles, so nobody is locked out.
04
RUN THE WAITING LIST

From enquiry to first day, in one flow.

The journey from a parent typing your name into Google to their child eating lunch with you. ParentLink keeps the whole family journey in view so nothing slips through.

Online booking portalPaid plans
Your own public booking page, one shareable link. Parents pick a session and real dates — capacity-checked live — for a one-off, a recurring slot, or a whole term block. Instant-confirm or approve-first, lead times and booking windows under your control, branded with your logo and colours on Pro. A club can put it on its own website too — a Book now button, or the booking page inside its own page.
One answer to “is it full?”
Places are counted by who is in at the same time, from each session’s own times — so two children who never overlap don’t take two places, and a morning that runs to 3pm takes an afternoon place. The waiting list, the Dashboard, the morning email, the Occupancy report (Pro) and a club’s booking page all give the same answer.
Embeddable enquiry form
Drop an iframe on your nursery's own website. New leads land directly in your waiting list as a first-touch entry. Honeypot + rate-limited.
Waiting list and family journey
Your family journey as a board: Enquiry, Visit, Offer, Joining pack, Funded hours, Started — change the steps on Pro. Drag families from step to step; on Pro, each step’s documents send themselves.
Site-visit booking
Offer the times you can show families round, or let them suggest dates. You confirm the visit, and the family gets an email (and a text where texts are on). On Pro, a feedback form goes when you mark the visit done.
Document workflows
Send registration packs, medical forms, consent bundles via the parent app. Parents fill, sign, submit. Audit-logged.
A journey made for your kind of setting
Nurseries, wraparound and holiday clubs, activity clubs and childminders each start from a family journey made for them, with its documents ready to send. Reset to it whenever you like — and undo the reset.
Two-way parent messaging
Two-way in-app messaging. Each parent chooses how they are told about a new message — app notification, email or text. Texts come with every paid plan (or use your own Twilio, Vonage or MessageBird on Pro).
See their app
From Parents, open the parent app as one family sees it — Home, their child, Messages, Fees — to talk them through it. It is to look at only: nothing in it can be pressed, and no sign-in is shared.
Conversion funnel
Enquiry → visit → offer → joined — see drop-off at each step. Spot the step that needs work before it costs you places.
Trial + settling-in
Trial sessions on the waiting list, settling-in periods on enrolled children. Special billing rules for trial weeks built in.
05
RUN COMPLIANCE

Audit, GDPR, retention, inspection prep — without the spreadsheets.

The boring stuff that becomes critical the day you need it. ParentLink keeps every relevant trail without you having to remember it's there.

One-click inspection packPro
Fourteen printable sections — readiness checklist, children, staff with DBS and first-aid dates, attendance, safeguarding, care plans, fire drills, risk assessments, medication and more — generated from live data the day the call comes.
Append-only audit log
Every change to a child, staff, money or consent record is logged — old value, new value, who, their role and when — and kept for 24 months.
One-click GDPR export
Answer an Article-15 Subject Access Request yourself, in a couple of clicks — one zip file of one child's data: profile, guardians, attendance, care records and financials as JSON, with the photos, videos and documents themselves.
Right-to-be-forgotten
Export a child’s full record in one click, and erase a parent account from inside the app. Settings → Data retention sets how long each kind of record is kept after a child leaves; you may also set periods for the messages, care logs, registers and photos of children still with you. Once a period has passed, someone you allow approves the deletion (a manager unless you choose otherwise), and every deletion is logged.
Document signing + ack
Send a policy or consent form via parent app. They sign with their finger. Audit trail records the device, IP address and time.
Safeguarding / curriculum prep
Care records are deleted only when someone you allow approves it, after the period you set — safeguarding, accident and medication records can be kept longer but never shorter than the usual minimum — so what your regulator (Ofsted, CIW, CI, ETI) expects you to keep is there on inspection day. Per-child key-information snapshot for inspection day. Incident log filterable by safeguarding category.
Safer-sleep checks
Configurable nap-check cadence per child, room, or nursery. A live countdown board with a chime prompts the next check, a push backstop covers a missed one, and every check is logged for inspection day (Pro: the Sleep checks audit report).
Medical + allergy registry
Per-child allergens, dietary needs, EpiPen status, GP details — visible to the key person, kitchen, and on the printed register.
Policies read and signed
Publish each policy as a PDF and choose who must read it, how long they have and when they sign again. Staff read and sign in My work → Policies; Staff → Compliance shows who has signed which version, with print and CSV for an inspector.
Notifiable events
Every rule for your nation, grouped by who to tell — allegations, missing children, outbreaks and more. Record how and when you told them, their reference and reply; managers and your DSL are reminded 3 days and 1 day before the deadline, and when it is overdue.
Collector + guardian model
Approved collectors and permanent guardians, each with their own door PIN. The kiosk sends the PIN to the server to be checked — the decision is never made in the browser — and repeated wrong guesses lock that device out. Where you switch them on, a parent can make a one-off pass in the app for someone collecting that day: one named person, one day, used once.
Medication record (MAR)
Regular, PRN and one-off medications with dose, route, schedule and daily maximum. Every administration is logged — given, refused or missed — with an optional witness signature. Parents see their own child's record.
Risk assessments
Activity, premises and outing risk assessments, each with its hazards and control measures recorded against it — ready to hand an inspector, not buried in a folder.
Fire-drill log
Record every drill: the date, who took part, how long the evacuation took, and any notes. Builds the evidence trail regulators ask for, automatically dated.
Two-year progress check
The statutory EYFS developmental review, plus a gap analysis that flags where a group of children is falling behind so you can act before the next check.
06
RUN SMARTER

Power-user features that compound.

The features that pay back the third time you use them. Ask in plain English, the Today brief, keyboard shortcuts, and a roadmap that respects your time.

The Today brief
Up to seven things you need to know today — money owed, expiring checks, free places, next week’s cover — ranked, on Needs you and by email at 7am. Each line says what to do next.
Cmd+K global search
Press Ctrl+K from anywhere — type a child's name, a staff name, or a page. Drills into the child profile, not just the children list.
Just askPro
Ask about your setting in plain English — “who’s booked on Friday?”, “Jean’s attendance this term” — and the answer comes from your own records, with what it looked at. The names of your children, families and staff are swapped out before a question leaves ParentLink. It drafts messages for you to check and send, and never changes anything itself. Managers and admins; 300 questions a month on Pro, more in packs.
Features you use
Bill with your own system, or keep your rota somewhere else? Switch that whole part off in Settings → Features and words and it goes for everyone, staff and families alike, along with its reminders. Nothing is deleted — switch it back on and it is all there. You choose at sign-up, and an account owner can change it any time.
Your words
Members, pupils or players; classes, groups or squads; club, school or academy — pick from the list or type your own. Screens, lists and printouts use your words; Ofsted, EYFS and DBS never change.
Needs you
A single feed of things that need attention — incomplete child records, unsent docs, upcoming visits, ratio breaches, expiring policies. Beats hunting through 12 screens.
Pinned children
Pin the children you check most often (your room, a settling-in, a new starter). One-click access from the home bar.
Dark mode
Light mode by default; dark mode toggle per user. Both modes test under the same accessibility rules.
Resume where I left off
Sign back in and land on the page you were on.
Push notifications
Phone notifications for staff and parents, on or off for each device — parents also choose sound, vibrate or silent. Works on Android, and on iPhone (iOS 16.4 or later) once the app is added to the Home Screen.
API + webhooksPro
A documented read-only REST API and HMAC-signed outbound webhooks — both live. Read attendance into payroll, read invoices into your accounts package, fire an event on sign-in or payment. On the Pro plan: self-serve scoped tokens, no per-call fees, no Enterprise upsell. See /developers.
Occupancy forecastPro
Project room-by-room occupancy up to six months ahead — with or without your waiting list, factoring in known leavers and holds — so you can plan staffing and spot empty weeks before they cost you. CSV export for the board pack.
AI draft & polishPro
Optional AI help (Pro) that turns a few words into a warm, parent-ready observation or message, suggests an activity for a learning plan, and drafts quiz questions on a policy — you always read and edit before anything is saved or sent. Off by default; switch it on per nursery, powered by Anthropic.

Try it for 14 days. No card.

Sign up takes two minutes. Import your children and parents from a spreadsheet (CSV), with a preview before anything is added. Run it alongside what you have today.

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